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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28737960">Mando'a Musings</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmota_b/pseuds/marmota_b'>marmota_b</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Choruk'la Kajir [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Languages and Linguistics, Mandalorian Culture (Star Wars), Mando'a Language (Star Wars), Meta</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:15:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,851</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28737960</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmota_b/pseuds/marmota_b</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Random thoughts on the Mandalorian language (and culture), from an English-as-second-language language geek :-)</p><p>1: What effect a non-gendered language is actually most likely to have on Mando'a native speakers' interactions with aruetiise<br/>2: Dictionary and pronunciation musings<br/>3: The linguistic nature of Mando'a<br/>4: The four essentials of Mandalorian cooking<br/>5: Vowel harmony in Mando'a?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Choruk'la Kajir [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1908958</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Non-gendered language vs Basic (English)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, yeah, exactly what it says on the tin.</p><p>It's also kind of going to be supplementary material on the Star Wars AU that sneaked up on me. All those things that threaten to turn the notes into essays longer than the chapters. :D</p><p>For *vocabulary* musings, comments etc. I've started a Google spreadsheet <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VOXE5xR4NOOg2qoKQS3HcaYMdSsau9_VfceygykaBkU/edit?usp=sharing">here</a> - I've opened it to comments (but not edits) so you can add your own vocabulary musings and observations there if so inclined.</p><p>Feel free to discuss!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mando’a is a non-gendered language.</p><p><br/>
Fans see that tidbit of info and get excited by that and develop Mandalorian culture as very respectful towards personal gender preferences.</p><p><br/>
Which is all well and good and can definitely contribute to a story / character if you want to take it that way. But as far as realistically depicting a language and culture goes, it‘s actually still a very gender-centric view of how a <em>non</em>-<em>gendered</em> language works.</p><p><br/>
Far more than Mandalorian native speakers being all "my pronouns are they/them, what are yours" immediately upon meeting someone, what’s actually likely to happen is that they’re going to see everyone as "<em>kaysh</em>" and keep confusing genders in Basic and interchangeably and randomly call people both <em>he</em> and <em>she</em> regardless of their actual gender (-preferences).</p><p><br/>
<em>Because that’s exactly what native speakers of real world non-gendered / minimally-gendered languages like Finnish or Hungarian do in English.</em>
</p><p><br/>
Native speakers of non-gendered languages are capable of being very proficient in English and still writing sentences like "He got up and brushed her teeth" without catching the mistake. When I see a text littered with such mistakes, I automatically assume the author is highly likely to be a native speaker of a Finno-Ugric language…</p><p><br/>
… so I bet there are linguistically-inclined individuals on Holonet social media going at people "Hey, are you by any chance Mandalorian, I’ve noticed you confuse personal pronouns…"</p><p> </p><p>Please give me more Mandalorians randomly messing up Basic genders. :-)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'm not a native speaker of a non-gendered language. I'm actually a native speaker of a more gendered language than English is.</p><p>But I've learned the basics of Finnish, Estonian &amp; Hungarian. If you want gender-neutral pronouns, take your pick.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Mando'a Dictionary and Pronunciation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I've started a Google spreadsheet for my (and other people's) additions, corrections and comments on the dictionary from Mando'a.org</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I've just started <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VOXE5xR4NOOg2qoKQS3HcaYMdSsau9_VfceygykaBkU/edit?usp=sharing">a Google spreadsheet</a> for my additions, corrections (because typos) and comments on the dictionary from <a href="http://www.mandoa.org">Mando'a.org</a>, because trying to keep track of my (and other people's) thoughts, etymologies &amp; inventions without putting them down systematically is basically impossible. It is, unfortunately, not really searchable the way the website is; I haven't yet figured out how to search it without replacing, in the Google setup. I'll try to figure out what to do about that (and welcome suggestions).</p><p>It is also, quite naturally, going to be a work in perpetual progress. So may this "chapter" be.</p><p> </p><p>The original pronunciation guide from Mando'a.org leaves a lot to be desired, especially if (American!?) English isn't your first language. I might try to gradually transcript it in some simplified IPA for clarity somewhere (= in the spreadsheet), but most likely won't, because no one has that kind of time. :P</p><p> </p><p>Most glaringly, though: Wherever you see <strong>a beten (AKA apostrophe) between two consonants</strong> in a Mando'a word, and see an additional vowel in the corresponding spot in the pronunciation guide, DON'T pronounce the vowel; I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a <strong>glottal stop, or a sort of "holding" of the first consonant</strong>. Think double consonants in Italian or Finnish. Thus, "aay'han" only has two syllables, not three as the pronunciation guide might lead you to believe. (This style of transcription, I think, stems from the fact English actually does have a tendency to replace vowels with glottal stops. It is, though, unfortunately not a reliable way to transcribe it at all, because every dialect of English does so differently...)</p><p>The one exception might be kar'ta, which is transcribed as [kah-ROH-ta], i.e. there actually is an additional, <em>accented</em> syllable in the middle. It almost looks like a spelling vs pronunciation moment, something like the Edinburgh / Edinborough situation in English. But I'm also not 100% sure whether that isn't just a <em>poetic</em> pronunciation of the word, specific to the Vode An chant and the need to fit the required text into the required number of syllables / rhythm / poetic meter (which Mando'a, according to Wookieepedia, canonically does at least the other way round, by dropping terminal vowels). ETA: okay, I forgot about the Kar'ta Tor song. So it's either an old / poetic pronunciation, or an Edinburgh situation.</p><p> </p><p>Also, I'm pretty sure that <strong>doubled vowels vs single vowels</strong> in the spelling of Mando'a words actually <strong>denote length differences</strong> (otherwise why do it at all?), which the English spelling used in the pronunciation guide has no means to denote. Thus, "A" is [a], while "Aa" is [a:].</p><p> </p><p>Another of my problems with the transcription is that I have no idea what are the differences between [ai] and [ay] and [ey] and... whatever else the transcription uses for vowels in the A and E range. Which of these are single vowels transcribed in a confusing English manner, and which are actual diphtongs, and why would some particular words have a diphtong when others with similar spelling don't? No way to tell for sure, I'm afraid, and it rather annoys me that there seems to be less of a system to the Mando'a spelling as pertains to pronunciation than the general spelling system of it so clearly lends itself to...</p><p> </p><p>There's also the matter of <a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mandalorian_(writing_system)/Legends?file=Mandalorian_map_%25281%2529.png">the Mandalorian alphabet</a>. Which was, sadly, developed independently of the language, so... it probably throws in <em>more</em> in-universe spelling/pronunciation problems for the worldbuilding types among us. :P</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Linguistic Nature of Mando'a</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Is Mando'a really an agglutinative language?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Articles about Mando'a usually say Mando'a is an agglutinative language, but I find myself disagreeing.</p><p>It definitely has some agglutinative features, but when I compare it to Real World agglutinative languages I have studied (I'm not fluent in any at the moment, but I do remember how they work)...</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutination">Wikipedia</a> has this to say about Hungarian: "Hungarian uses extensive agglutination in almost every part of it. The suffixes follow each other in special order based on the role of the suffix, and many can be heaped, one upon the other, resulting in words conveying complex meanings in compacted forms." It also says "it is a typical feature of agglutinative languages that there is a one-to-one correspondence between suffixes and syntactic categories." (Apologies for using Wikipedia as a source; this is lazy fanfiction research here, not a linguistic study.)</p><p>Suffixes like that in Hungarian or Finnish include a high number of "noun cases" many of which would instead be expressed by a preposition in different types of languages. Suffixes expressing meanings such as "in" and "at" and "from" and "from at". Even meanings such as "part of / a somewhat uncertain number of" (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitive">partitive</a>).</p><p>You don't see grammatic / syntactic complexity like that in Mando'a. No, as far as I know Mando'a actually has prepositions and no affixes that would express meaning usually conveyed by them; and a big part of grammatical / syntactic meaning is expressed through context / word order - which is far more a feature of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language">analytic languages</a>. Since Mando'a does not have noun / pronoun cases, the only way you can tell what is the subject and what is the object in a sentence is usually word order - much like in English, a largely analytical language. (Compare to flexive languages like Czech where you can tell which is which from the noun case and can therefore switch the order without changing the syntactic meaning - in Czech, word order is instead very closely linked to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_and_comment">theme-rheme</a> meaning distinction.)</p><p>(ETA: Come to think of it, Mando'a does have rudimentary pronoun cases, and it's at this point I realise that the fact it was developed by a native speaker of English probably shows here and there.)</p><p>Mando'a also has super-simple verb conjugation, not even expressing things like person; which is, again, not a very agglutinative way of dealing with things.</p><p>Mando'a does have agglutinative features, as I've said - it has the (often done away with) tense prefixes, the be'/b' prefix (= of), the interrogative tion' prefix, you can theoretically stick a pronoun at the beginning or end of a verb to express the subject or object... compound words probaly also count as agglutination. But it's definitely not a <em>highly</em> agglutinative language the way Hungarian is.</p><p>One thing to keep in mind here is that languages are rarely limited to one type, actually. Modern English is largely an analytical language, but it still retains some flexive features. So it doesn't negate the nature of Mando'a or make it unbelievable or impossible to work with to say it isn't purely agglutinative - it's simply a description to help you understand its nature better and perhaps use it more naturally (since trying to force it into the agglutinative box only would probably make for clunky Mando'a).</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Four Essentials of Mandalorian Cooking</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The dictionary at Mandoa.org contains two words that are named as “one of the four essentials of Mandalorian cooking”, which of course leaves one wondering what the other two are.</p><p>I found a discussion about it <a href="https://mandalorians.forumotion.net/t105-the-four-essentials-of-mandalorian-cooking"> here</a>; it brings up some very good points but also I think some of the meaning of the original words gets lost and muddled in the process, so I thought I would sum up my own version of things. (Warning that the abovelinked discussion quickly but thankfully briefly devolves into discussion of… what comes out the other end. :P :D )</p><p> </p><p>The canon ones:</p><p> </p><p><b>Heturam</b> - “mouthburn”. The one everyone knows about. Mandalorian food is <em> spicy</em>.</p><p> </p><p><b>Draluram</b> - “bright mouth”. The one I think some people don’t understand properly. The OP in the above discussion zeroed in on the phrase “strong flavour” in the dictionary explanation and overlooked “vivid” and “distinct”, which then led people in the discussion into thinking “why is this even separate from <em> heturam</em>?”</p><p>Well, I think it’s because vivid and distinct flavours often actually have less to do with <em> what </em> goes into the food and more with <em> how </em> it’s combined and <em> how </em> it’s prepared. There is considerable difference between the taste of vegetable soup where you just throw everything into a pot and cook it, and vegetable soup where you first sautée your vegetables and <em> then </em> add water / stock and seasonings and cook it, for example. (There is difference between using and not using stock.) I think what we’re looking at under <em> draluram </em> is the latter case: food that, regardless of what goes into it, gets as much taste out of its ingredients as possible.</p><p>And also food that combines tastes that won’t just blend into one another, but stand out and “support” one another. The food the taste of which you remember months if not years after the fact is definitely vivid, definitely <em> draluram</em>. Meanwhile, even spicy food can be one-note and not very memorable taste-wise.</p><p>I think it also kind of goes hand-in-hand with the fact that the Mandalorian idea of a feast / special occasion food is <em> skraan’ikase </em> - lots of “small foods”. Lots of tastes.</p><p>P.S. Watch <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfRpxj29RXE"> this </a> episode of Townsends’ 18th Century Cooking and watch out for Jon saying “bright” in relation to a taste, and I think it may answer all questions you might have. ;-)</p><p> </p><p>And now the question that remains… what are the other two?</p><p> </p><p>I’ve picked up two more ideas from the discussion and my own musings:</p><p> </p><p>Mandalorian food has to be filling and nourishing: <b>yai-yai</b> - “peculiarly Mandalorian description of dense, high-calorie food, of great importance to people dependent on highly portable field rations”, as the dictionary says. It’s not listed as another of the four essentials, but it makes a lot of sense that it would be one. And as the discussion brought up, this essential probably also includes foods that are <em> nutritionally balanced</em>.</p><p>Uj’alayi is obviously one of those foods - it’s sweet so fast calories, but it also has the fats from the nuts. (At least that’s my super layman understanding of how nutrition works.)</p><p>This one has a lot to do specifically with soldier eating, but since that’s such a big part of traditional Mandalorian culture in general, I can imagine it’s something that would be picked up by all Mandalorians regardless of profession or whether there’s a war on. It makes sense even for people working manually in the fields or in the forge, after all (other professions that seem to be important for Mandalorians).</p><p> </p><p>And the fourth one is the one I mostly came up with myself, drawing on what the discussion brings up: <b>food that stores well, does not take up too much space, and meals that can be cooked quickly in many variants depending on what’s currently in your stores</b>. I don’t have a Mando’a word for this yet (but it will probably have something to do with <em> taylir </em> , “hold, keep, preserve”). But it’s a rather obvious feature when you consider that for much of their history many Mandalorians were essentially nomadic, <em> in space</em>, whether they were waging wars or travelling for work. I repeat, <em> in space</em>: we can’t <em> quite </em> draw similarities with other nomadic cultures from Earth history here because the spaceships in Star Wars may offer you more storage capacity but they also mean that you can’t e.g. hunt or herd animals.</p><p>I wonder if actual seafaring ships may be a better parallel from Earth cultures or not. At the very least, gihaal is rather obviously powdered <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzAt6e1l-c"> stockfish</a>, and it rather obviously falls into this category. Haashun - “parchment bread” - also rather obviously falls into this category, and, after watching the Townsends videos on ship food, does seem to be something of a parallel to ship biscuits.</p><p>And of course stew - in this case, tiingilar - is a textbook example of a meal you can make out of whatever is currently on hand.</p><p>Based on lockdown-cooking experience… a lot of Mandalorian cooking may be based around some very basic staple ingredients and lots of different recipes that bring more variety into the monotony.</p><p> </p><p>So it’s all connected: of course you need your food that stores well to also be yai-yai, otherwise there’s little point to having it in the first place.</p><p>The spiciness of Mandalorian cooking probably has to do not just with food preservation (as the discussion touched upon) but also simply with livening up the monotony.</p><p>And of course if you consider cooking the same staple long-shelf-life ingredients over and over and <em> over </em> again, you begin to understand the importance of <em> draluram</em>, too. Forcing down a bland porridge is rather difficult when you’ve been eating it for days on end. You want something more vivid, something <em>brighter</em> to keep yourself interested in eating your food.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Vowel harmony in Mando’a?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>And more on Mando'a as a (partially) agglutinative language</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>So I’ve touched on how Mando’a isn’t a 100% agglutinative language.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But I wonder if it may, to some extent, share another feature with (some?) Real World agglutinative languages - may there be some degree of </span>
  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_harmony">
    <span>vowel harmony</span>
  </a>
  <span> in Mando’a?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Warning, that Wikipedia article is </span>
  <em>
    <span>advanced </span>
  </em>
  <span>(and possibly also confusing because Wikipedia is a collaborative thing written by users compiling many sources). I have trouble understanding the terms and I <em>have</em> studied linguistic subjects… some time ago. So to simplify: vowel harmony is when (behold my totally incorrect manner of definition!) the vowels in a word are all similar in some way. For example, in Finnish you have regular vowels, and vowels with umlauts, and then neutral vowels that can be paired with both types. And when you stick a suffix to a word with umlauts, the suffix will also have an umlaut; when you stick the same suffix to a word without umlauts, the suffix will not have an umlaut. It’s written and pronounced differently, but it’s still the same suffix with the same meaning.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now, I would have to really immerse myself in the existing Mando’a vocabulary to see if there was a discernible pattern of vowels, and no one has that kind of time; plus as mentioned, the pronunciation guide leaves a lot to be desired so it’s anyone’s guess if there’s something more going on that’s not captured in orthography. But I have definitely noticed that with many of the existing words, the vowels inside a word are the same or similar. There are a lot of words where the vowels sort of repeat and follow in a chain. I’ve caught myself subconsciously doing something similar when trying to construct phrases and new words, trying to keep them… in harmony.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One of the practical features of vowel harmony is that it makes words easier to pronounce because you don’t have to keep contorting your mouth and throat as often, so to say. And that’s something that makes a lot of sense to me with Mando’a as a language that tries to be as efficient as possible. It’s probably easier to say “akaan’ade” than to say, say, “apocryphal”, even though the words are roughly the same length. (Mando’a also doesn’t do too many consonant clusters which also helps a lot but that’s another issue entirely.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But the idea that Mando’a may genuinely have some level of vowel harmony going on and it isn’t just me using my gut feeling and it isn’t just pleasantly sounding words in the manner of Italian - comes from the fact there are three variants of the negative prefix: ne’, nu’, and n’.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The prefix with a vowel versus a prefix without a vowel is a situation that happens with other Mando’a prefixes, too - be’ and b’, ke’ and k’ - and it’s simply dependent on what the word you’re attaching them to begins with. So… why the additional "nu’"?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It makes me wonder if perhaps that’s a remnant of a more advanced vowel harmony in ancient Mando’a. If perhaps ancient Mando’a spoken by the Taungs was more agglutinative than the version that developed after any and all species started being accepted in the Mando’ade?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It's a theory, at least.</span>
</p>
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